Wilhelmian. THE GIRL QUEEN AND THE DUTCH FISHING FLEET.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 102, 27 October 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

Wilhelmian. THE GIRL QUEEN AND THE DUTCH FISHING FLEET.

There was nothing in the streets of Amsterdam (says Julian Ralph, in the Daily Mail, under date Amsterdam, 3rd August) to shoi# that for the first time in Dutch history a Sovereign was about to officiate at what these people call a flute ireview— though they spell the word "vloot." But when you went down to the wharves there seemed to be nothing else in anyone's mind. At every wharf were many steamboats, launches, tugs, and yachts, aud,,»ll^were aflutter with bunting and crowded* ; with passengers in their Sunday apparel and 1 with Bank Holiday faces. At half-past 10 o'clock we all started for the Zuyder Zee, and- my .boat found itself alongside of a queer little man-of-Avar that was shaped like an egg, but was somewhat larger. And there sat Holland's young and beautiful Queen,, on the front end of the egg, all in pink. The only other man who could speak English pointed) her out, and I saw at once that her photographs exactly resemble" her. "Funny people," said my, friend, "I saw her go aboard, and noi one cheered or littered a sound. Moreover, you will observe that no one looks at her now or pays her the slightest attention." He did not know that I was devouring her with my eyes, and he did not notice that I turned aside and jotted down the minutest details of her costume and her companions, who were mainly young men in squash hats and cricket caps. Giltedged naval officers and the tars in white and blue made amends for the careless dress of theso courtiers. WHERE JOY WAS UNCONFINED. I think ifc was when we entered the lock or gate to the Zuyder Zee that we began singing and dancing as if our veins flowed music instead of blood, and as if St. Vitus had got us all by the heels. There we were, ccimmasiores of boats all side by side and with a dozen or. twenty bands, of which each band took its turnWhatever they played, some of us sang or hummed, and the rest of us danced. We all knew each other, and the men climbed from boat to boat, and pulled or swung tie ladies after us. Wherever we went, we danced and sang. Every deck quivered and every vessel rose and fell in time with our polkas, waltzes, reels, and jigs. Whenever we were introduced to a lady, we caught her around! the waist and whirled her around the deck. rt I fancy that the stokers danced as they fed the fires with coal. I know that the deck-hands and stewards danced whenever they got an idle moment. Many of us did not dance. We sang or hummed ; we led the music with our sticks, umbrellas, and parasols, or we beat time with plates, knives, boot heels, tumblers and whatever else we had hold of. We sang or hummed tho whole time* r "Why, is that you Mrs. Van derbvun ?" we said ; "how glad I am to — tuin-tiddy-tum — tiddy-tiddy-tum." Then our lady friend said, *'It is ten years since we have seen each other — te-tutty-te-tut-te-tut-te-tutty." A MUSIC-LOVING NATION. There certainly never were such people for loving music, and when it comes to dancing, no one approaches us except tho Boers in South Africa. When we were but on the Zuyder Zee in a stiff gale, we kept on singing and dancing and eating and drinking, and the only other man who spoke English came and said that the boat ahead of us moving under a cloud of bunting, was the one Queen Wilhelmina was aboard of, and that the lady on tho egg-shaped man-of-war was the daughter of the Minister of Marine. We caught up with the true Royal boat, and there, without doubt, sat the real maiden monarch ot the Netherlands, so 'like her portraits, that I wondered how I could have thought the Cabinet Minister's daughter resembled her at all. Here was a true queen ; all youth and beauty and pride, surrounded by elderly, dignined men and women, but seated with her favourite Lady of the Bedchamber in proper, almost solitary state. She was dressed in yellow— hab, jacket, skirt and boots— and I made minute notes of her gowning and retinue. THE DUTCH NAVY OF PEACE. i Her boat shot ahead, and an exclamation of surprise broke from us all as we saw that what we had taken for a leafless, wintry, forest-clad- island in the offing was an assemblage of sixteen,hundred fishing-smucks, or one third of . all th^e vessels in the Dutch cod and herringtrade. Their hulls made the island and their masts made the forest. Five thousand, of the seventeen thousand fishermen, who earn each year a guilder for every man, woman, and child in Holland, were before us, with their snub-nosed boats, that are s-haped like soap-dishes, pulling at their anchors. In the background was the real land, with a great mediaeval castle rising above it. We danced ahead, and sang whatever we did not dance, until, presently, we found ourselves close to the great industrial flotilla, the Hollandish aavy of peace. Great was the deCight of this spectator to find the cockpits peopled with flaxenhaired women and children in lace caps and gaudy vests, with bell-shaped skirts of gay colours, and knobs and bands of silver and gold glinting under their caps. The men wear close-fitting skirts, tiny caps, and balloon-like trousers, whicji are cut out with" a scroll saw and, after being put on, are blown up and tied at the top and bottom to keep them in the proper shape. Seeing hundreds of such costumes, made a gaudier comic opera spectacle than "Pinafore." While I revelled in this glimpse of tho Middle Ages, I again saw; the lady who was declared to be the true Queen. As lier steamer approached she lighted a cigarette, 'leaped upon the rail of the boat, and began to swing her yellow boots and stockings to and fro. THE REAL QUEEN AT LAST! Just then a Royal salute was begun by the fort on the shore. "The Queen ! The Queen !" was shouted by thousands, and in an instant the sixteen hundred masts changed from dead tree trunks into eightly score tulip stems each blossoming gaudily with three flags —the red, white, and blue of Holland, a ponnant to match it, and the blue or white or orange flag of whatever fishing fleet the boat belonged to. Literally, miles of the skyline was made gay and tremulous with these colours snapping in the wind." Out from the shore came the virgin Queen, in an exquisitely* beautiful great row-boat of gold and white — a galley all snow-white, but bcautitulfy relieved by figures in carved gold— figures of Neptune, of Ariadne, of Venus, of Aphrodite, of angels, of dolphins, and of Cupids. Under a canopy upheld by light fluted columns, chat might have been' newly carved out of the solid gold, sat Wi—elmina^ -for whom the multitude made it-

self hoarse. Whistle 3 shrieked, bells rang, every fisherman hauled down his tulip-like blossom, and shot it back again to its place on its stem.